It is common to protect articles being shipped in containers by filling extra space in the container with so called dunnage to isolate the articles from the container walls and inhibit movement of the articles within the container. Retailers, and especially those who specialize in catalog sales, typically use boxes that are not specifically designed in size or shape for particular articles and therefore they include substantial amounts of packing or dunnage in the boxes along with the article or articles shipped to reduce the risk of breakage.
Cushioning dunnage, such as excelsior, shredded newsprint, and the like has been in long use. More sophisticated materials and forms have also been proposed, such as the helical coil-like or tubular-like dunnage made from paper web shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,650,877, or helically convoluted synthetic strands as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,347,036. Recent popular materials are plastic bubble sheets, particles or shapes of materials such as polystyrene, and other open-or closed-cell foamed materials.
All packaging is coming under attack because of disposal problems, especially due to the lack of adequate landfill facilities and the non-biodegradable properties of the popular plastic packing materials. The quantity of plastic dunnage used in packaging is so great, and the ability to recycle it is so poor, that the disposal problem is becoming unmanageable. While some industrial uses of polystyrene particles, to take one current example of a widely used dunnage material, permit collection and reuse, the great majority of such material is used for packing retail products that are widely distributed directly to consumers, who individually never receive enough to justify collection and recycling; yet in total, the amount of polystyrene packing used is making its disposal a major problem. The same is true of bubble pack. A further problem with such materials is the space they require for storage prior to use. The nature of the plastic dunnage is such that it takes as much space while stored as it does in use. Retailers and especially mail-order houses, find it necessary to provide large rooms or warehouses merely to hold the dunnage needed for shipping their products. This adds substantially to the packaging costs. Some of the non-plastic dunnage used, such as shredded newsprint, lacks structural strength and is easily compressed, and is disliked by retailers and customers because of the dirt and mess associated with its use, as well as the space it occupies unless the retailer does its own shredding, which still involves a less desirable packing operation than dispensing small plastic particles into a package.